While "Send In The Clowns" is one of my personal favorite Sondheim songs, I marvel at the brilliance of the lyric writing in "Finishing The Hat" from Sunday In The Park With George. I chose this song especially for these lyrics: "And when the woman that you wanted goes, you can say to yourself, 'Well, I give what I give.' But the woman who won't wait for you knows that however you live, there's a part of you always standing by, mapping out the sky, finishing a hat."

Never have I heard the solitary call to any art (and its excellence) and the conflict it can sometimes cause in interpersonal relationships so beautifully, succinctly and poetically expressed as in this song.

Thanks, Stephen Sondheim. And thanks, Mandy Patinkin for the stunning singing and acting (and impeccable diction) of this song included here.

"Yes, she looks for me--good.
Let her look for me to tell me why she left me--
As I always knew she would.
I had thought she understood.
They have never understood,
And no reason that they should.
But if anybody could...

Finishing the hat,
How you have to finish the hat,
How you watch the rest of the world
From a window
While you finish the hat.

Mapping out a sky,
What you feel like, planning a sky.
What you feel when voices that come
Through the window
Go
Until they distance and die.
Until there's nothing but sky.

And how you're always turning back too late
From the grass or the stick
Or the dog or the light,
How the kind of woman willing to wait's
Not the kind that you want to find waiting
To return you to the night,
Dizzy from the height,
Coming from the hat,
Studying the hat,
Entering the world of the hat,
Reaching through the world of the hat
Like a window,
Back to this one from that.

Studying a face,
Stepping back to look at a face
Leaves a little space in the way like a window,
But to see--
It's the only way to see.

And when the woman that you wanted goes,
You can say to yourself, "Well, I give what I give."
But the woman who won't wait for you knows
That, however you live,
There's a part of you always standing by,
Mapping out the sky,
Finishing a hat...
Starting on a hat...
Finishing a hat...
Look, I made a hat...
Where there never was a hat."

Mandy Patinkin singing "Finishing The Hat" from "Sunday In The Park With George"